The modern koala is a well-known and beloved marsupial, but researchers have limited knowledge about its evolution. Surprisingly, there is a “approximately 30-million-year-gap” in the fossil record of Australian marsupials, such as kangaroos, wallabies, and wombats. However, there may be progress in bridging this gap. Recently, fossils were discovered at the Pwerte Marnte Marnte site in Australia’s Northern Territory, which belong to an unidentified “member of the koala family (Phascolarctidae) or a close relative.” This finding could potentially provide a missing link in the evolutionary chain. The new species has been named Lumakoala blackae and would have been around the size of a small house cat, approximately 6 pounds at most, and possibly adorable, as explained by the New York Times.
Fossilized teeth belonging to the leaf-eating Lumakoala, dated to 25 million years old, exhibit significant similarities to teeth from two species of small marsupials, Chulpasia jimthorselli and Thylacotinga bartholomaii, that roamed northeastern Australia 55 million years ago. It was previously believed that Chulpasia and Thylacotinga were related to marsupials from South America, which was once connected to Australia as part of the supercontinent Gondwana. However, the discovery of Lumakoala suggests that Thylacotinga and Chulpasia might actually be early relatives of Australian herbivorous marsupials like koalas, wombats, kangaroos, and possums. Flinders University PhD student Arthur Crichton, the lead author of a study on the discovery published this month in Scientific Reports, states, “If our hypothesis is correct, it would extend the diprotodontian fossil record back by 30 million years.”
According to Crichton, fossils indicate that two previously known koala species, Madakoala and Nimiokoala, coexisted with Lumakoala in the Northern Territory, as reported by CTV News. Study co-author Gavin Prideaux, a Flinders University paleontologist, adds that until now, there had been no evidence of koalas ever being in the Northern Territory. Prideaux also mentions that during the late Oligocene Epoch (23–25 million years ago), there were at least seven species of koalas, which he refers to as the “koala heyday.” Additionally, there were giant koala-like marsupials known as ilariids, which the Times describes as “rather terrifying…with an estimated weight of as much as 440 pounds, roughly the size of an upright piano.” (Read more koala stories.)
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